Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Above and Beyond

 Yesterday, my community had a pretty significant weather event. A really bad storm came through, possibly containing a tornado, right at the time our students were being dismissed to go home. As kids were in the hallway to go to their busses or cars, we lost power briefly and a tornado warning was issued at the same time. Int the brief darkness, everyone -- teachers, administrators, bus drivers, custodians, aides -- jumped into action, herding kids away from doors and into interior rooms. Kids were scared and confused. Some were crying. Some were wet and chilled because they had already gotten on a bus or in a car and had to come back in through the punishing rain and wind. 

Teachers sat on the floor with their kids in cramped spaces where it was stuffy and talked with them, told stories, shared jokes, gave pats on the head or arm, handed out tissues to wipe tears, and reassured kids they were safe.

Once an all clear was given, students came out of their sheltering areas and back to the classrooms with their teachers as it took some time to determine how to manage dismissal now. It turns out that there were many trees, branches, and power lines down all around town, making it difficult and/or unsafe for school busses to get kids home. So we had to reach out to families to let them know they needed to come get their kids.

It was after 5:00 PM before the last children were picked up. And the teachers stayed. They played games with kids, read them books, and talked with them. They dug up snacks and made sure kids could get to bathrooms (lots of potty visits needed after the kids were done sheltering). They helped kids get their belongings together (since many had just left their bags and supplies behind as they went to their shelter areas). They contacted parents directly and sent pictures of their kids to the parents. They took phone calls from worried moms and dads. 

In short, the teachers stayed with their kids until the last ones went home because it had been such a scary, long ending to the day. When parents said, "Thank you," the teachers just kind of shrugged and smiled because to them, this was just part of what they do for their kids. Nothing extraordinary happened. This is the job of a teacher -- you're there for your kids, no questions asked.

Some people may say that this indeed a teacher's job and they shouldn't be thanked for doing what is expected of them. I understand that logic. But I disagree. Once the all clear was issued, teachers could have easily went home. There were plenty of other people available to keep an eye on the kids until they got picked up. No one would have blamed the teachers at all for wanting to get home to check their property themselves or to get to their kids who were home through the storm. But the teachers stayed. 

I stayed, too. My kid is grown, and my husband was home safe with my dogs. We had no real property damage. I tried to make myself useful -- I helped talk to parents and get kids to their rides and brought them to staff bathrooms when the kids' bathrooms were full. But really, I wasn't needed since all the individual classroom teachers were there. So I got to kind of be an observer, and it was just heartwarming to see the genuine care the teachers showed their students. It made me feel so proud to be able to count myself among their ranks -- making me cool by association :-) 

I wanted to be sure the whole world knows just how much the teachers did for the kids yesterday. Above and beyond is an understatement. 


The scene outside my school after the storm. The teacher in this picture had her car damaged in the storm, but she was outside clearing debris so everyone could walk safely on the sidewalks.


Also, an uprooted tree about a block over from my school.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Teaching During a Pandemic -- We're Not Being Babies

 A friend of mine recently shared this article on Facebook, explaining why teaching during this pandemic is not sustainable. It was a great read, pretty brutal in its honesty. It explains what so many people who don't work in education need to know. Last spring, people were cheering the work teachers did; now, they're calling us babies. We're not babies. But we are running ourselves ragged going above and beyond. Lots of people are. It just seems to be a by-product of a pandemic -- everything we do seems exponentially harder. But teachers are getting hit hard, and when they say they think we should not be doing in person teaching, it's a clear indicator that the hell that is remote teaching is better than the hell that is teaching in a school right now.

Let me offer a couple things before I launch into my rant. I am a teacher, but I am no longer a traditional classroom teacher, so I am well aware that the amount of work I am doing is nowhere near the amount of work my colleagues are doing who have actual classes of students. I'm tired from the extra effort my job takes, and I know I have it easier than my co-workers. The district I work in a relatively small, and we are offering in person instruction with the option for families to choose remote instruction if they do not want to send their kids to school in person. I personally feel my district has done a good job with this in terms of safety protocols. I do not worry about getting sick when I am at work. But I am starting to wonder if shifting to remote instruction might be worth considering. Here's why.

It comes down to bodies: we are running out of bodies to run the classrooms.

Let me use myself as an example. On November 1, my husband told me that he had a stuffy nose. That alone was enough to exclude me from going to work the next day; I was in a home with someone who had one of the symptoms on the COVID self-certification list. My husband needed to go get tested so I could go back to work. He called his doctor Monday; he got tested Tuesday, and found out that day he tested positive. That kept me in the house for his 10 day quarantine period. We tried to keep apart from each other -- slept in separate rooms, kept 6 feet apart in other parts of the house. But when his 10 days was up, because I had been in the same house with him, I needed to start my own 14 day quarantine to see if I would develop symptoms. That took me through Thanksgiving break, and I was set to return to work on November 30. But as luck would have it, on November 28, I had some chest congestion and a low grade fever, so I went to get myself tested, and now I'm working from home still, waiting for my test results. So I've been working from home. Now, I don't have my own class of kids, so my district did not have to hire a sub to cover for me. But what if I was a regular classroom teacher?

Well, I could teach from home, provided I felt healthy enough. I could video into my classes, but I still need a sub in the room to monitor the kids. This is where the massive staffing chess game begins.

Substitute teachers are hard to come by in the best of conditions. It's not a steady job, it pays notoriously low, and too many kids see it as open season on a stranger in the room. My district has tried to anticipate the need for subs, so they hired 2 full time subs per building to cover classes when teachers had to be out. We have since had to hire more subs because the 2 per building wasn't enough. We are also trying to hire day-to-day subs as well. People who are common subs are not subbing right now -- they're often retired teachers, and they are wary of coming into schools because they may be health compromised. So in order to get bodies in rooms, subs are having to cover more than one teacher's class in a day, and teachers and instructional aides are being pulled from plan periods or support roles to cover classes. 

Teachers and staff aren't necessarily gone because they're sick. But they have to be out if they've been exposed or if they even have the sniffles. And it's usually not just a day or two. It tends to be for 5 - 14 days at a time. 

Some teachers in my district are teaching in person learners and remote learners at the same time. That means they're teaching 2 classes at essentially the same time. This requires two very different methods of teaching, plus a heavy reliance on technology. Inevitably, one group of kids seems to get more attention than the other. If the in person kids need help, they get the attention while the remote kids are left to find a way to be more visible or vocal to show they need help. Or the teacher gets so wrapped up in trying to help remote learners not only with the lesson but also any tech issues, the in person kids lose out. That's why in my district, we use subs and aides in as many classes as possible to assist the teacher with tech set up and monitoring and troubleshooting the remote learners. But when those subs and aides start getting pulled to be the lone adult in a class to cover a teacher who is out, things can go south quickly. Teachers are working tirelessly to keep all kids engaged however they can.

Then once the kids start having to stay home -- again, not necessarily because they're sick -- they can easily fall behind. Teachers end up fielding a flood of emails from students and parents with questions about what was covered or with tech issues they need help with. Teachers have to lesson plan for in person and remote learners, plus make sure those plans are detailed enough for a sub to follow in case the teacher has to leave abruptly -- maybe the teacher gets sick, or the teacher gets notified in the middle of the day that he or she has been identified as a close contact and will have to go home and isolate for 10 - 14 days.


Teachers are in a hamster wheel. They're spinning plates. Is your head in a fog just trying to make sense of all these moving parts? Imagine living in it every day. 

I believe the vast majority of teachers love being able to teach in person with their students. I think they're worried about getting sick, but it's not a pervasive fear. I think rather most teachers are afraid of literally collapsing from exhaustion from trying to keep up with everything they need to do. If teachers talk about wanting to teach remotely, it's because they are reaching levels of desperation. Teachers all know that remote teaching isn't the best for the kids, but is it better to have a teacher in and out of a classroom, having the kids being taught by different people every day while a teacher is out quarantining? None of this is ideal. None of it. But please realize that teachers are not being babies. They're not giving up on their students. They're not being lazy. They're being the opposite of all those things. They're being complete professionals. They're desperately trying to find ways to reach all their learners. And they are working harder than they ever have in their careers.

Thursday, June 25, 2020

COVID-Era Education: Pirouette Instead of Pivot?


Bitmoji Image

In the era of COVID-19, school has been turned upside down and inside out. When everyone was in lockdown, decisions were pretty simple. Now that states are reopening to various degrees and with different levels of success, the decisions about returning  to school are about to get really, really hard.

I am thinking off the top of my head here, so if there are lots of unanswered questions and problems and holes, I get it. This is off the cuff writing and thinking happening here.

Maybe we need to take a cue, kind of sort of, from school choice advocates and restructure school districts where families have some choices. For instance, thinking about the district where I work, there are 4 school buildings. Currently, the buildings are divided according to grade levels. Rather than dividing by grade levels and trying to come up with a schedule that fits as many as possible while allowing for those who need/want exceptions, maybe we change each building to manage the learning environment different ways. One building can be "school as usual" where everybody just goes back and does what we have always done. Another building can be an environment where the strictest possible health protections are put in place: very small, self-contained groups of students, 6 feet apart, wearing masks, no shared materials. The other 2 buildings could be varying degrees of the 2 extremes -- maybe bigger class sizes, masks, semi-self contained. Maybe split schedule for families who have some flexibility with their time and who want kids to not have to wear a mask all day. Then finally, there can be a pool of teachers who have offices instead of classrooms who run online instruction for families who don't feel sending their child to a school environment right now is safe or beneficial. Families can choose the configuration that suits them best. Or I think about my local high school district, which has 2 buildings: grades 9 and 10 in one, and grades 11 and 12 in another. One building is a 3 story building; the other is a 1 story building with many wings. Buildings like that could be reconfigured by floors or wings. A change like this would really shake up education in this country. So often, school doesn't look like what it did when today's parents were in school, what with Common Core, technology, standards-based learning, and an emphasis on 21st century skills. This kind of change would really be mind boggling. It's an incredibly different way to think about how to structure the learning environment and experience. But we are living in such a strange time, maybe school needs to uber, ultra flexible. This would be a massive undertaking by any school district, one that would require a great deal of planning and preparation. But schools could do it. After all, most schools were able to pivot to remote learning with very little notice. Education could pivot again -- this time, it's just going to look more like pirouettes.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

MacGyver-ing Education

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced at 4 PM on Friday, March 13 that Illinois schools would close starting Tuesday, March 17 through Monday, March 30 (this has now been extended through April 7). This announcement gave schools all over the state little time to prepare for what to do for kids who would not be in school. Since these were called "act of God" days, there were no requirements for schools to provide instruction. And in fact, some schools did just that -- nothing. But lots of schools started a mad scramble to learn all they could about what e-learning looks like and what tools could be used to deliver e-learning instruction. That's exactly what my school district did.

Speaking for myself, I spent all last weekend reading about e-learning to understand the best way to structure e-learning lessons for students. And believe me when I say there was a LOT out there to read. I worked to synthesize what I learned to share it with teachers in my district. Then I spent the rest of the time looking at the myriad of tools out there and tried to narrow them down to a short list of easy-to-use, effective tools for students AND teachers. And then I worked on putting together what I could for teachers and students so when we were all in school on Monday, we could do some front-loading before we separated from the kids at the end of the day. I can't say for certain what other teachers in my district did, but based on the high level of successful learning that happened this week, I would say they all did the exact same things I did. Everybody researched, synthesized, constructed, and collaborated so when we did our first e-learning lesson Wednesday (Tuesday was a teacher institute day), it was a success. High levels of participation (over 90% attendance, and some teachers individually reported 100% attendance) and quality learning taking place (for a sample, check out the Twitter hashtag #CSD17Learns).

We also managed to arrange getting devices to families who needed them for e-learning as well as meals for students who needed those, too. Arranging everything required the work of literally every staff member -- teachers, administrators, custodians, secretaries, cafeteria staff, social workers. Everyone mobilized throughout the weekend, came to school to serve our students Monday, then used Tuesday to finalize the plans. Every day, we debriefed and fixed what needed fixing. This required all of us to work well beyond a traditional day. Most of us were working from 7 or 7:30 in the morning until well after dinner time.

And nobody complained. In fact, everyone really celebrated. We knew we were still connecting with our students and their learning was continuing. Parents got involved and supported what the teachers were doing, too, and that is why we had such a successful week.

I have never been more proud to be an American public school teacher than I am now because I witnessed and experienced a level of dedication and commitment to kids this week that defies explanation. And when I saw this post on social media, I felt I had to reiterate what is said. Teachers ignored obstacles to learning and made sure their kids still got the best possible education available, one these kids have a right to.



In my district, we are on spring break this coming week. We are all telling each other to rest, relax, and enjoy this week off because we earned it. But I know that I will have some rest time, but I will also be working to make sure that when we "return to school" on March 30, there are meaningful learning experiences in place for my students. All the teachers I work with will be doing the exact same thing over spring break, I am sure.

Because that's what teachers do. We work tirelessly for our students.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

The Why


Have you ever heard someone say, "Why do kids need computers at school? I didn't have a computer when I went to school and I did just fine." Or maybe you've heard comments like this: "Why do kids need to learn coding? They're just playing games. They're not really learning anything useful." Or even a statement like this: "What's the point of the kids making videos? That's not teaching them anything that's on the tests they take."

I can answer that question in one Tweet.

The learning that kids do today -- from what they learn to how they learn -- is not the same as it was for most adults. It's not even the same as when my own daughter was in high school less than 10 years ago. That Tweet I shared is a prime example why kids need access to computers, the internet, and tools that allow them to create, communicate, and collaborate. Because that's how kids learn.

Sometimes teachers feel like kids don't want to learn. But that's not really true. They DO want to learn. They just might not want to learn things the way we are presenting them (or even the things we are asking them to learn). Obviously, there are some skills that are just necessary to learn, but if we can give kids the right tools to learn with -- meaning the tools they are accustomed to use for learning -- and if we can give them some autonomy in their learning, then we as teachers just might be able to hook them into the things we want them to learn, like photosynthesis, geometry, the Constitution, or Shakepseare's sonnets.

When kids have the right tools and when they have some voice in their own education, they do indeed learn. But when we try to force a square peg (learning today) into a round hole (learning the way we used to), it sure looks like kids don't want to learn. But look at that Tweet again. There she is. Learning, Creating. Collaborating. For FUN!

What a profound lesson Miss P taught us.



This post also appears on my work blog for staff in my school district.

Friday, December 14, 2018

A Non-Expert Based Opinion About SBG

The district I work for is in the final year of implementing SBG across all grade levels, K-8. I am admittedly still learning about SBG, so it is entirely possible I have no ever loving clue what I am talking about. I was skeptical about SBG at first -- not the learning, but the grading. SBL has been happening in some way, shape, or form for as long as I've been teaching, but SBG, especially in upper grade levels, not so much. But here's the epiphany I had that made me think it might be something good:

My daughter struggled mightily with math in high school. It was rough waters her freshman year, hurricane her sophomore year, and a full on tsunami her junior year. I refused to let her take a math class her senior year lest she fail and not be able to graduate. She had enough math credits to graduate, so despite how much it pissed off her counselor, I kept her out of pre-calc her senior year. Instead, I opted to have her get caught up in math through Kumon Learning Center (they were a Godsend, if I'm being honest). One the problems I ran into with her math teachers is they couldn't tell me where her holes or weaknesses were, and one teacher actually told me he didn't have the time to figure it out and help her. I was grateful for that honesty -- I knew I was on my own to figure out how to help her.

As I've learned about SBG, it had dawned on me that this would have been so helpful for my daughter in high school. I could have had a better idea where she was struggling instead of just assuming she sucked at all of it.

An added benefit might have been less of a blow to her self-esteem. My daughter was convinced she wouldn't get into college because of her grades (she did get into college, AND she graduated, AND she got a good job after graduation). By using SBG, there is less of a stigma associated with the labels used (in my district, they are EPAL -- Exceeds, Proficient, Approaching, Limited). None of them are clearly an A, B, C, D, or F, so maybe she would have seen herself as lacking or weak in math instead of stupid (she idled in the D range for a lot of math).

I've got zero research to use, and I have zero expertise in this topic, but when using my kid as an example, I gotta say, I see some merit.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

All Means All

Earlier this month, I was incensed to read a story about a transgender middle school student who was not allowed to shelter with her classmates during an active shooter drill because nobody seemed able to decide if she should shelter in the boys or girls locker room. I had to wonder if the kids were all going to take a shower or change their clothes during this drill, because if they weren't, then I can't for the life of me figure out why it matters which locker room she or ANY of the other students went in. If there was a real active shooter, are students going to have to follow gender norms in order to stay safe? What would happen if the boys locker room was locked? Do all the boys have to stay outside while the girls get to be safe? Of course not! But that's not the point I'm trying to make.

Being in education can be tough. We have to think of the students first, not ourselves. That means we do things like pull ourselves together when the kids walk in the classroom after we had a fight with our teenager in the car on the way to school. That means we treat with kindness the student whose parent is a constant thorn in our side and we just don't like. It also means we protect all of our students when they need protection. All of them. We have to put aside any personally held beliefs or prejudices we might have. So when we see kids bullying the little girl who comes to school in the same clothes every day of the week, we step in and protect her. And when we hear kids use a racial slur when talking to a student of color, we step in and protect that student. AND when we practice how to shelter from an active shooter, we make sure all students have the safest possible place to take cover without regard to gender.

If you work in education and you take issue with students based on things like socio-economic status, religion, parents' political leanings, race, ethnicity, religion, immigration or citizenship status, health issues, sexual orientation, or gender, then you don't belong in education. Because as an educator, you have a moral imperative to serve all the students in your classroom and school -- you don't to pick and choose. And, by the way, when I say "educator", I am speaking of teachers, administrators, secretaries, aides, custodians, cafeteria staff, bus drivers, and anyone else who works with kids in a school.

If you are an educator and you can't be an advocate and protector for each of your students because you let your own thoughts interfere with the total acceptance of the little humans in your care, then you don't deserve to have the privilege of being in a position of influence for those young lives.